***VERY LONG***I APOLOGIZE***

My parents are in town for a visit, and I'm having an awful time trying to cope with the way different parts of me view my childhood and relationship with my mom and dad! My mind keeps going back and forth from one viewpoint to the other. Each viewpoint feels right at the time that part of me is active. No matter which side I take, the others feel like they are being invalidated and told that their experiences and memory of what happened in the past are wrong!

I've had a lot of very upsetting, traumatizing situations that have arisen in my family (mostly as a child, but sometimes also as an adult). I've been in therapy a long time trying to understand it, accept it, and cope with it. But along with the parts of me that hold intense feelings of rejection, sadness, shame, and anger, I have other parts of me that repeatedly tell me what happened wasn't that bad...that I've just made a big deal out of it. This has made it super hard to accept that the things that happened to me weren't my fault and/or aren't just my tendency to overreact and takes things too personally.

Whenever my parents come into town and I see them, a part of me takes over that thinks my mom and dad haven't mistreated me. I feel very guilty for thinking so, and for feeling so much pain and anger toward them (even though I never show it and always treat them well when we're together). I start believing that the parts who remember bad treatment and who feel so much deep pain must be remembering things wrong. I start doubting and discounting their pain and memories. If the visit with my parents goes well, the conflicting feelings are even worse! One part says, "How can you be so unkind toward your mom and dad? Look! They aren't doing anything to hurt you!"

After spending the day with my parents, I go to bed feeling like the day went well. I feel like we have a pretty good relationship, and I think I feel fine. But that night, I usually have horrible nightmares...the repetitive kind I get that center on being lost, separated from, or abandoned by my family. I dream that I can't remember how to get home, can't find the way, can't reach them because my cell phone doesn't work, or I dream I am in danger or I dream that I have dissociated and wake up somewhere not knowing what I've done, but just knowing that I did something terrible). After a night of these kind of dreams, I wake up exhausted and depressed. And I can kind of feel those other parts of me that hold the pain, the ones that are hurt, the ones that I'm trying to heal in therapy -- and it feels like they are crying because nobody believes them. At that point, I realize that the pain is real and that what happened had to have been very traumatic.

But the minute I go see my parents again, I switch back to thinking everything is good and fine and always has been. I think there must be something really wrong with me, and wrong with my mind, for thinking otherwise.

I feel like I am being torn apart and don't know who or what to believe. I know people are made up of both good and bad traits. But somehow, I need to see them one way or the other. Otherwise, somebody feels like they are being called a liar and told they are wrong for thinking/feeling the way they do. If I validate the parts that feel hurt, betrayed, and rejected, then I feel like a hypocrite going up to see my parents and acting like we're close and things are fine. If I validate the parts that think my parents are great and I am the wrong one, then I can't allow those hurt parts of me to voice their feelings and pain in therapy because it feels mean and wrong.

I don't know how to deal with this! I feel like this situation is tearing me apart. Talking things over with my parents about the past isn't an option. The few times I've tried to talk to them about what I experienced as a child, they have minimized or discounted what I've said or, at times, turned the tables back on me. (For example, once I reminded my mom about how hard it was for me as a little girl when she took business trips. She replied, "When I was home, you never seemed interested in talking to me or spending time with me anyway, so I didn't think it would make any difference.")

One other time, my mom said she can't remember anything about my childhood that would have caused me to have problems today, other than leaving me with babysitters alot. She told me her childhood was more unusual than mine. My sister also thinks my mom is great. She is their favorite and has a much closer relationship with them than I do. She would never back up my feelings or memories from childhood if it made my parents look bad or wrong at all.

Please help!!

Peaches